Friday the 13th Conspiracies

Happy Friday the 13th! You’ll be pleased to know that this is the first of THREE Friday the 13ths this year, occurring exactly 13 weeks apart. Though there are often three Friday the 13ths in a year, this year is particularly rare because it’s a leap year. A year like this won’t occur again until 2040.

And if that isn’t enough rare superstition for you, keep in mind that it’s also 2012, the Year of Impending Mayan Doom. Yay! Bad luck for everyone!

The origin of this unlucky day and number is appropriately shrouded in mystery (because most of the stories you’ve heard are complete fabrications). Many claim superstitions about the number 13 date back to Babylonian times, so we’ll start there.

The Code of Hammurabi allegedly omits the 13th law because Babylonians believed the number brought bad luck. This is absolutely untrue. The original manuscript contained no numbers, and it was actually the 1910 translation by L.W. King that omitted the 13th law. Other translations, such as Robert F. Harper’s, include the number 13.

Another popular myth is that the superstition dates back to Norse mythology. It is said that when the mischievous god Loki showed up uninvited to a dinner, making him the 13th guest, one of Odin’s sons, Baldr, was accidentally killed. I skimmed the Prose Edda this morning, specifically the tale of Baldr’s death and while Loki does crash the dinner party, there is no mention of the number of guests in attendance.

And that brings us to the Christian/Biblical ties to Friday the 13th. Everyone knows there were 13th guests at the Last Supper, which is why Judas betrayed Jesus. There are also claims that biblical tragedies often occurred on Friday. Eve gave Adam the apple on a Friday, the Great Flood began on a Friday, and Jesus was executed on a Friday. If anyone can find actual historical evidence to support any of these Friday claims, I will buy you an army of unicorns (standard shipping rates apply).

Fast forward to 1906. A Boston businessman and author named Thomas W. Lawson published a book in serial form that became surprisingly popular. Friday, the Thirteenth tells the story of a greedy stock broker who sends Wall Street into a panicked financial frenzy on a Friday the 13th in 1907. Lawson’s serial novel is the actual origin of our modern superstitions about this date. Many academics agree that attempts to root the superstition in ancient times began after this novel was well-known.

As the father of Friday the 13th, Lawson wasn’t exempt from the bad luck surrounding the date. In 1907, a schooner named after him sank on Friday the 13th, the same date he modeled his novel around.

Quite a coincidence, right? It’s up to you to decide which superstitions to believe and which ones to ignore. So I wish you all a safe Friday the 13th, and keep an eye out for black cats, ladders, and deranged killers in hockey masks.

Originally posted on tealeavesla.com

How Television Makes You Dumb

The effects of misinformation, propaganda and other forms of psychological manipulation have been studied since the 1940s. Conspiracy theorists have traced the long history of this type of “mind control”, citing the government’s MK-Ultra project andpatents that claim the brain can be influenced and manipulated by subliminal messages hidden in radio and tv broadcasts.

University of Utah’s Jacob Jensen recently published a study that revealed you don’t need electromagnetic mind control waves to skew the public’s perception. All you need to do is place your propaganda neatly between actual facts, and the human brain will do the work for you.

“Two studies have now shown that fiction (written and televised) can produce a delayed message effect,” Jensen and his colleagues write. This is troubling, they add, noting, “People are bombarded by mass media every day all over the world, and a sizeable (and growing) body of mass communication research has demonstrated that much of this content is distorted in a multitude of ways.”

Even if your initial response to information on television is skeptical, that skepticism wanes as time goes by. Your brain forgets the origin of the misinformation and without a source, falsehoods can be filed away as facts.

This is known as the sleeper effect, when one retains a piece of information but gradually forget that it came from an unreliable source. A 2004 meta-analysis confirmed this effect is highly successful in convincing people that propaganda and misinformation is factual information. Though the effect works with any medium, television and other visual medias are the easiest methods of conveying misinformation to a large audience. 

These studies show how dangerous misinformation, like every program on FOX News, can be to the general public. It is very easy to influence someone’s world beliefs by hiding falsehoods within a fact-based model (like newscasts). Be careful and think critically while seeking out the facts. Never rely on anyone’s “research” except your own. 

Elenin, Nibiru and Why You Won't Die in 2012

The doomsday astronomy is really getting out of hand. I won’t lie, I saw both 90’s asteroid-destroys-Earth movies. I think most humans are fascinated by the idea that something from space could end existence as we know it. 

With the Mayan end-of-the-world deadline rapidly approaching, amateur astronomers and conspiracy theorists are churning out theories about comets guiding mysterious brown dwarf planets toward Earth and NASA’s obvious cover-up of the entire impending disaster.

I think it’s time to clear up a few things about the comet Elenin and the supposed brown dwarf Nibiru. Let’s explore the origin of the theories, which date back to Babylonian times. 

The ancient Babylonians worshiped many gods, with Marduk being their highest creator god. Each god had its own planet, and Marduk’s was the largest in the sky. The Babylonians called it “Nibiru”. Nibiru rose and became visible around the fall equinox, a sign that the Babylonian’s Nibiru could be Jupiter. It’s also possible the ancient civilization called all stars used for navigation “Nibiru”.  Regardless, Nibiru is not an extra planet that will show itself in October 2012. 

Sci-fi writer Zecharia Sitchin furthered the myth by using Nibiru in his writings. He believed an ancient alien race lived on the planet, which visited our solar system once every 4,000 years. His interpretations of physics and mythology have been ridiculed by the scientific community. Though he plays a large part in keeping the Nibiru myth alive, his findings and conclusions are based on nothing scientific or academic. 

Elenin is a distant long-period comet discovered by Leonard Elenin in 2009. The conspiracy has changed over the years to suit the scientific evidence. First, theorists speculated the comet itself would impact Earth. Now it is believed the comet is dragging a large brown dwarf planet toward Earth which would cause a catastrophic collision.

NASA and amateur astronomers are carefully tracking Elenin, though it poses no real threat to Earth. It will pass closely by Earth on October 16, 2012. When I say “close”, I mean close in terms of the size of the entire universe. It is predicted to be no closer than 22 million miles from Earth. For comparison, the short-period Honda comet passed by Earth on August 15 at a distance of only 5 million miles. You didn’t even notice, did you?

Neither of these cosmic bodies pose a real or impending threat to Earth. It is merely an Internet legend, keeping itself alive through conspiracy forums and YouTube videos. Though it’s very easy to believe that NASA withholds certain information, I don’t think there’s any merit to the Nibiru/Elenin theory. It is a patchwork theory crafted from several sources, including works of science fiction, that probably provides a nice distraction to what NASA might actually be doing and hiding from the public. 

Keanu is Immortal

 

Some people are blessed with youthful looks. Keanu Reeves is one of those people, and because he hasn’t appeared to age over the course of his twenty-year career, conspiracy theorists suspect Reeves might be an immortal.

The site keanuisimmortal.com houses all of the ‘evidence’ that reveals the many previous lives of the actor. The most famous person believed to be Reeves is the Roman emperor Charlemagne, who died in 814. 

French actor Paul Mounet (pictured above) does look a lot like Reeves, and he is the most common previous life mentioned by theorists. They claim Mounet died under mysterious circumstances and that his body was never found. The New York Times listed Mounet’s cause of death as heart disease at age 75. I was unable to trace the claim that his body was never found, but I was also unable to find Mounet’s place of burial. 

So is Keanu Reeves an immortal, or perhaps a vampire, who has lived for thousands of years as various people in various countries? It’s definitely a fun idea to think about.

The FBI Gears Up for Infiltration

I do my best to keep things light and goofy on Conspiracy Friday, but today I chose a rather serious and current topic involving a federal agency and one of the most despised hate groups active in America today.

National Public Radio reported that the FBI has repeatedly invited members of the Westboro Baptist Church to their law enforcement and agent training sessions. According to the FBI, the group was invited “to establish open dialogue in an academic setting to train law enforcement on how to more effectively engage with the activist community.”

That statement is insulting for about six trillion reasons. If the FBI was truly interested in furthering an academic dialogue with the activist community, there are literally hundreds of activist groups who don’t spew hate from their megaphones, activist groups who don’t get off by telling homosexuals and the families of dead soldiers that God hates them.

So my question is: why invite a universally loathed group to give seminars and classes to federal agents and police officers? The official who extended the invitation to the WBC was too cowardly to give his name to the press, but he insisted the FBI only wanted to learn the history of the ‘terrorist group’ and find ways to build a relationship with them. Timothy Phelps, who led the seminars, maintains that he did not know they were participating in a training class on domestic terrorism.

It doesn’t matter which lie the FBI and media decide to feed to the masses. The important thing is this signifies some very evil-doings amongst our intelligence agencies, and they aren’t interested in the War of Terror, they’re interested in the war on your right to be an activist. I personally feel like the FBI isn’t trying to learn from Westboro, they’re trying to figure out how to infiltrate and blend into groups like Westboro.

This type of government infiltration to deter fringe and activist groups from forming has already happened. The mass suicide in Jonestown had so many ties to the CIA. So many details reveal that it was not simply the story of one crazy guy who convinced a bunch of Americans to kill themselves. I’m not going to say that it was a massive mind control experiment, but I do think it had something to do with federal intelligence agencies tightening the noose around an American’s right to organize. COINTELPRO isn’t a conspiracy theory concocted by the tin-foil-hat-wearing basement dwellers. It’s a very real government operation that ultimately ignored and abused the rights of Americans.

On the surface, yes, Westboro Baptist Church is the enemy. But they are being used by a greater enemy to deter citizens from taking an active role in any movement the government frowns upon. It doesn’t matter that the WBC is a horribly racist and misguided group, and I assure you the FBI doesn’t give a crap about the invidual and nuanced beliefs of each group. They only care that you’re against them, that you are a dissident who wants to rip the fabric of our great nation into pieces. In this light, every political group who wants their opinion acknowledged on a federal level is our ally, even the WBC, against a group who indiscriminately infringes upon the rights of American citizens: our own government.

The Ghost in Your iMachine

Steve Jobs and the Apple corporation have a surprising number of conspiracies woven into their history. The first Apple computer was sold in 1976 for $666.66, which was enough to allow theorists to spin a few Antichrist urban legends.

666 is a mark of the devil, and the apple logo is a nod to the forbidden fruit. Steve Jobs is the serpent, we are the newly created human about to fall from grace. The end of the world will occur because you wanted to fit a boombox, a computer and a telephone in your back pocket. But, I’ll berate the world for its addiction to consumerism on another day. Today let’s focus on the privacy invasions and spying committed by this multi-billion dollar corporation.

It’s no secret that most of your Internet/smart phone activity is heavily tracked and monitored by the corporations providing these services we’ve come to need on a daily basis. I personally think the line should have been drawn years ago regarding privacy invasion, but the quest of the latest technology often outweighs privacy rights, at least during and immediately following your purchase.

Let me introduce you to Traitorware, a privacy-destroying system that Apple developed and submitted to the patent office in 2009. Intended to lock out unauthorized users, Traitorware will be able to take photos of its users, record their hearbeats and track their location. Your voiced could be recorded, even when you’re not making a call, and your Internet use can be closely monitored. Apple would also be able to identify (and subsequently “punish”) users who attempted to jailbreak or alter their devices.

A story broke earlier this year after users discovered that Apple was tracking GPS movements (complete with timestamps) for everyone using the iOS4. The information is unprotected and uncrypted and available on any computer or device synced with your phone or iPad. Steve Jobs responded saying the claim that Apple tracks its users is false. They’re merely “collecting data”.Experts point out that there’s little reason for outrage. The scariest thing about this is that Apple never deletes the data. Other companies, like Google, only store this info for a short time before deleting it.

Depending on how much you love and need your Apple products, you might be willing to part with some of your privacy to enjoy your spying, content-controlled iProducts. Think long and hard about it though before you give up your privacy and allow the Man easy access to everything about you.

Water: Now with More Lithium!

Stephen King wrote a story in 1986 called “The End of the Whole Mess” which documented a scientist’s discovery of a chemical compound that, when added to drinking water, would calm a population and ultimately put an end to war and violence. Unfortunately the compound boasted many side effects. Though it did reduce world violence, many people suffered dementia, Alzheimer’s and eventually death.

Science fiction, meet reality. An Austrian study recently published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that areas where lithium naturally occurred in drinking water had lower suicide rates than areas where water contained no lithium. Earlier this year, a Japanese study was published that showed low traces of lithium can promote life longeivity.

There have been numerous studies done, and one of the earliest is eerily similar to Mr. King’s cautionary tale. The crime statistics in27 Texan counties were studied over a ten-year period. The counties that had access to lithium-enriched water reported much lower crime rates than the counties that didn’t. “The End of the Whole Mess” centers around La Plata, Texas, a town with no violent crime.

Many believe it will be difficult to persuade countries to allow lithium to be added to their drinking water. Though experts say there are no negative side effects to consuming trace amounts of lithium daily, they said the same thing about fluoride. There is evidence that prolonged lithium use can affect renal function, kidney and liver function, and cause birth defects in a small number of babies.

Several European countries are toying with the idea, but their citizens mostly object to mandatory medication. Only 10 percent of England’s water is fluoridated, and less than one percent in Japan. Norway’s water hasn’t been fluoridated since they outlawed it in 1973, and Austria never implemented a water fluoridation system.

The authors of several studies even went as far to say that lithium would never be added to European drinking supplies due to public dissent, but the idea would be more accepted in the United States. You know, because we just lay down and submit to being drugged like lab rats.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, but at this point I only want to drink water that is completely devoid of all elemental and nutritional compounds. Who’s with me?

The Government's Demon Hunters

Nick Redfern is a popular and intriguing figure in the paranormal realm. He is one of the few authors who doesn’t let himself get carried away by the high strangeness that often fills his books. He is a champion of disclosure and receives most of his information from declassified government papers obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. He is less interested in forcing his own opinions and conclusions onto his readers and more concerned with presenting all the evidence available on a topic for the reader to analyze and scrutinize.

Redfern calls his latest book, Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife, one of the strangest he’s ever written. Redfern tells the story of a secret government think tank who called themselves the Collins Elite and the mysteries they investigated. It’s one of those rare conspiracy theories that manages to combine government secrets, UFOs, demons, the occult, paranormal activity and Christian ideology about the human soul, producing a super theory that is almost too fantastical to swallow.

The Collins Elite investigated many theories, mostly about UFOs, extraterrestrials and abduction events. Many members of the group were government intelligence employees who worked in the Air Force, the Department of Defense and other intelligence agencies. The most controversial conclusion of their investigation involves the true identity of aliens and the motives behind their visits.

The Collins Elite turned to the occult for clues to solve solve the UFO mystery. They researched Aleister Crowley’s magickal methods for communicating with demons, as well as paranormal beliefs about demon possession, channeling and poltergeist activity.

Christian ideals about the human soul played a big part in their research. The group firmly believed that each human on Earth possessed a soul that left the body after death. They studied the stories of alien abductions, discovering that it was possible to halt an abduction if the victim shouted Jesus’ name.

The Collins Elite finally reached the conclusion that aliens are not extraterrestrials from another planet but physical manifestations of demons. They believed these demons abducted humans to extract their souls.

Their suggestion for combating demons and protecting the souls of the people was to reinstate Old Testament religious beliefs. The final battle between good and evil is near, and only devout belief in the Christian God can save one’s soul.

It is the belief of the group that far from being extraterrestrial in origin, our purported alien visitors are, in reality, deceptive demons and fallen-angels; the minions of Satan, who are paving the way for Armageddon, Judgment Day, and the reaping and enslavement of our very souls.— Nick Redfern

Mike Clelland at Hidden Experience recorded an interview with Nick Redfern that goes into greater detail about the actions and beliefs of the Collins Elite. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend it, and this interview by Christopher Knowles.

Stuxnet and Nuclear War

The conspiracy machine began quietly producing theories surrounding the Japan earthquake/tsunami and subsequent nuclear plant crisis mere days after it happened. Alex Jones and his HAARPies led the charge, claiming the earthquake was deliberately caused through the use of HAARP’s weather modification technology.

I’d like to focus on a lesser-known part of the theory, one that claims a computer virus called Stuxnet caused the security failures and radiation leaks in Japan’s nuclear power plants.

The worm was discovered in 2010 in Iran and quickly spread to Indonesia, India and the United States. Described as one of the “most refined pieces of malware ever discovered”, Stuxnet infected Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant and caused operational capacity to fall 30% at a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. In June, Wikileaks released papers linking an accident at Natanz to the Stuxnet infection.

Stuxnet was designed to target Siemens Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems which are used by industrial factories to monitor and control industrial processes. Most nuclear facilities utilize these to control centrifuges and cooling systems. If the systems malfunction or stop working, which is the Stuxnet worm’s intent, it could result in a heightened release of radiation. Some experts speculate that the worm originated in Israel, possibly developed by the Israeli Intelligence Corps’s Unit 8200.

The worm has since spread to many countries and in the wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan, some theorists are linking the worm to the shutdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant’s coolant reactors.

Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst and founder of IT-Harvest, addressed the Japan/Stuxnet theory:

It is not hard to extrapolate that designer-malware could target these systems with the intent to shut them down and cause at the very least the emergency shut down of a nuclear power plant, at the worst, release of a radioactive plume and the permanent disabling of the reactor - as has happened in Japan.

There is no evidence that the reactor monitoring systems received any damage other than destruction caused by the earthquake. It’s unclear how much power, if any, the plant’s computer system has now. There’s no way to know if the planet’s computers were online long enough to allow the computer worm in. Some speculate the worm was already in the nuclear plant’s system, waiting for a moment of vulnerability to make its attack. I suppose it depends on how “intelligent” you’d like to think Stuxnet is.

I think it’s quite a leap to say this computer worm caused the entire nuclear crisis occurring in Japan, though the theorists make a decent case. Cyberwarfare is a looming possibility, and there areagencies capable of designing malware that can cause physical damage to nuclear facilities.

Stiennon added this warning to his statement:

While most nuclear power plants are not on faults (with the notable exception of Diablo Canyon in California) they are all subject to mechanical failures induced by malware introduced to their networks. Redundancy and fail safe measures cannot rely on power, computers, or networks.

Avian Mass Suicide in Arkansas

I was trying to wait until Friday to make an official statement, but last night I saw Kirk Cameron on Coop/360 explaining that mass animal deaths are more of a pagan apocalyptic omen, not a Christian one. He said the rapture in the Bible (Bible, bible, bible, you will read the Bible) doesn’t mention a flock of blackbirds dropping dead en masse. 

……. 

Clearly this Arkansas blackbird conspiracy must be addressed immediately, before the Wal-Marts of Middle America are flooded with people stocking up on bullets and Doritos for the end of the world.

Here’s what happened. Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. The cause of death was said to be blunt trauma in mid-air, blood clots and internal hemorrhaging, but toxicology test results and the official cause won’t be available for at least a month (after we’ve forgotten all about this). Most agree that something startled the flock, perhaps fireworks, that caused them to become disoriented and fly into houses, each other and the ground.

120 miles away in Roseville, 100,000 dead fish washed ashore. 95 percent of the fish were one species, so scientists are suggesting that disease is the cause. Some fish who were sick but still alive were sent for testing.

The official causes of death being released to the media are the fish died from a species-specific disease, and the birds became startled, flew into everything and died. Sounds like a bunch of bullshit, right?

I think Alex Jones is kind of a loud-mouthed stooge, but he was one of the first to offer a different theory. He blames secret government testing and references the 1977 Senate hearings, which revealed that the US government contaminated 239 citieswith biological agents between 1949 and 1969. This sounds like a plausible explanation, especially if you read the CF article about the living goo that covered the town of Oakville, Washington.

John Fitzpatrick, director of Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab, has a meteorological theory. Although there were no reports of a thunderstorm over Beebe at the time, Fitzpatrick suggests that arandom thunderstorm might have formed over the flock, sucked the birds into its cyclone then spat them out all over the ground. 

Most of my own research points to government involvement. Even though Roseville and Beebe are over 120 miles from each other, both towns are within 20 miles of military bases, specifically air force bases (Arrowhead Assault Strip and the Little Rock Air Force Base). The government is most likely testing some horrific biological or chemical agent on the lovely animals and hardworking people of Arkansas.

The only thing that keeps nagging at my mind is the bird autopsy reports that say the birds died of blunt trauma in midair. I can only think of one incident where a bird dropped out of the sky, and the cause of death was blunt trauma…it happened in Signs when the bird flew into a spaceship that had its invisibility shield activated. So perhaps the aliens have arrived, and they’re silently hovering over a tiny backwoods town in Arkansas like looming, invisible giants. And they probably think our little bird theories are hilarious. 

The CIA Created the Unabomber

Ted Kaczynski’s violent reign as the Unabomber began five years before I was born and ended when I was 13. I didn’t follow the case at all, and almost everything I know about the Unabomber comes from Saturday Night Live sketches. My entire knowledge of the case could be summed up in one sentence: a mad genius who lived in a shed and looked like a hobo killed some people by mailing them bombs.

I recently came across a new bit of information that I hadn’t heard before. WNYC’s Radiolab ran a segment about a psychological study that was conducted at Harvard while Kaczynski was a student there. It was allegedly a study to monitor how individuals react to stress. The Radiolab story mentioned that many subjects described the study as the worst experience of their twenties. Kaczynski participated in the study, and it has been suggested that his experience at Harvard pushed him over the edge.

I found this extremely intriguing because Kaczynski’s time at Harvard coincided with the launch of a covert CIA research program called MK-ULTRA. The objective of MK-ULTRA was to experiment with brain function through the use of drugs, hypnosis and other methods for mind control purposes. The CIA was also trying to perfect torture and interrogation techniques. Could this Harvard “stress study” be an extension of MK-ULTRA?

The study, officially named the “Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted Men”, was spearheaded by a psychologist named Henry A. Murray. He began working at Harvard in 1927 and specialized in personality assessment tests. During World War II, he left Harvard to be part of the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime intelligence agency. The OSS would eventually become the Central Intelligence Agency. Murphy worked with recruits, designing tests to give OSS applicants including one called “Selection of Personnel for Clandestine Operations — Assessment of Men.”

After returning to Harvard, Murphy continued developing personality assessment tests and continued working closely with the OSS and eventually the CIA. The CIA funded his three-year study that Kaczynski participated in, which encompassed countless assessment tests and about 200 hours of the subjects’ time.

Professor of Philosophy and author Alston Chase has written a book about the Harvard study and its most famous subject entitled Harvard and the Unabomber: The Making of an American Terrorist.Chase has talked with Kaczynski many times as well as other subjects who were willing to talk to him. Although no one is allowed to view Kaczynski’s study file (Harvard has “permanently removed” it from their archives), his defense lawyers and several psychology experts were allowed to view select portions of the file. Psych test expert Bertram Karon found nothing remarkable about Kaczynski’s psychological profile. On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest level of psychological distress, Karon gave Kaczynski a 2. It wasn’t until after he left Harvard that Kaczynski began his psychological decline.

After speaking with other subjects, Chase concluded that the mind control and stress experiments the subjects participated in could be directly responsible for Kaczynski’s rejection of society and reign as the Unabomber. Most of the files relating to Project MK-ULTRA were destroyed before Congress brought the CIA to trial. There is a possibility that the Kaczynski study file no longer exists. Without it, it is impossible to know whether or not Kaczynski was doomed to become the Unabomber since birth, or if the government’s inhumane experiments caused him to hate society, fear technology and eventually turn to murder.